Networked computer platforms warehouse a variety of sensitive data, including personal information related to customers or other uses. For example, many Web vendors retain customer name, address, and credit card information for the conveniences of their customers. Many other entities securely store sensitive, private or critical information, further including data such as medical information, credit information, tax information, and many other varieties of personal or confidential information. The organization maintaining the data store may in cases be responsible for the integrity of the stored information due to regulatory requirements, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the Health Insurance Privacy and Portability Act of 1996 Act (HIPPA), or other compliance frameworks.
An organization that manages secure data in an on-premise or other network may choose to migrate that network to a cloud-based environment. In a cloud-based environment, the user can select and establish a set of virtual machines on a comparatively short-term basis to support Web storefronts and other applications. The resources required to support the user's set of virtual machines can be assembled from a set of resource servers which can supply various components for the user's specified infrastructure, on a per-component basis. One set of resources servers can supply processor cycles, while another set of resource servers serve operating system or application servers to the set of virtual machines from the cloud. In cloud implementations, the set of instantiated virtual machines however represent transient modules that lack permanent storage, such as allocated disk storage.
When assembling a cloud-based platform to process secure data, for example a credit card company migrating statement processing to the cloud, it may therefore be not practical or possible to migrate the secure data itself to the cloud. As one consideration, the lack of permanent storage in the cloud may make it impossible for the operator to transmit the secure data store to the cloud for storage. For another, even if storage were available or connected to the cloud, regulator requirements as noted may prohibit the disclosure, duplication or movement of secure data to an off-premise site. It may be desirable to provide methods and systems for management of secure data in cloud-based networks which permits the safe use of secure data from on-premise data stores.